Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - 06/17/26

[00:00:00]entity of life, you, who are Lord forever and ever. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the [music] Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[00:00:26]>> [music] >> This is an EWTN newsline. I'm Teresa Tomeo from Catholic Connection. [music] Leaders at the G7 Summit throwing their support behind President Donald Trump's tentative agreement [music] with Iran.

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[00:01:15]I'm Teresa Tomeo and Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders [music] starts now.

[00:01:29]>> What's stopping you from becoming [music] a Catholic?

[00:01:32]>> Why can't women become priests?

[00:01:34]>> 1-833-288-EWTN >> I don't understand why I have to earn salvation.

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[00:01:48]>> What's stopping you This is Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio [music] Network.

[00:01:58]>> Hey there, welcome again to Call to Communion here on EWTN. [music] We are live on this Wednesday afternoon.

[00:02:04]Would love to chat with you about anything regarding the Catholic faith, especially those of you who are not Catholic. Here's our phone number 833 288 EWTN. Call or text 833 288-3986.

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[00:02:39]You can also send us an email, and we're going to lead off with an email in a moment here. [email protected].

[00:02:47][email protected].

[00:02:50]Rich Jesse, our producer today, Matt Kubinski handling the phone screening.

[00:02:53]Ace McKay is on social media. I'm Tom Price along with Dr. David Anders.

[00:02:58]>> Hi Tom. How are you?

[00:02:59]>> I'm well. How are you, my friend?

[00:03:01]>> Hanging in there, thank you.

[00:03:02]>> Going to lead off with an email today from David who's listening to us in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Usually listening to us on Covenant Radio.

[00:03:11]David says, "At 73 years old, I'm studying to become a Catholic. The Lord seems to be placing all fine all these fine Catholics around me and in my path, which I'm very grateful for. So, a few weeks ago, I met a Catholic couple, nice older folks, quite sincere about their faith. They began to explain to me that they have become very much involved in the Catholic centering prayer movement championed by a fellow named Thomas Keating. They were very evangelistic about all this. They encouraged me to check it out, which I did. The way they described it, and the more I looked into it, the more it seemed to me like the Eastern Hindu/Buddhist TM transcendental meditation thing that I was initiated into back in the '70s, something I'd actually been trying to forget about. Honestly, when I spend time in prayer, I'd rather stay focused on Jesus and his blessings and not drift to an into a mental state of nothingness, which it seems like is the goal of this.

[00:04:14]There seems to be a significant division of thought within the church about this, however, so I'm wondering if Dr. Andrews has some enlightenment for us on this subject. Again, that's from David in Missouri.

[00:04:26]>> Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot of thoughts about this. So, Thomas Keating created the so-called method of the method of so-called centering prayer um directly influenced by the insight meditation movement in the United States, which is the American offshoot of the Burmese Vipassanā meditation movement that arose in 19th century Burma.

[00:04:50]>> Okay.

[00:04:51]>> Um in in the Buddhist canon of scripture, the Pali Canon of the Theravāda Buddhists, there is a text called the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, which lays out the practice of of mindfulness meditation or meditation upon the breath for purposes that align with the metaphysical aims of Theravāda Buddhism.

[00:05:10]It was a practice that fell into disuse for quite some time, centuries in fact, and under pressure from British colonialism, Burmese monks, Buddhist monks that is, revivified the practice and taught it to lay people. Previously, it had only been practiced by Buddhist monastics, and they they wanted to popularize, democratize it as a way of sort of pushing back against British colonial influences and find something that was accessible to to Buddhist lay people in Burma in which they could ground their identity. Um it moved to India, American I don't know a better word for them, pilgrims, you know, the kind of you know, the that the hippie crowd from the 1960s and >> you know, swarming into South Asia with the Peace Corps and post Vietnam fell into this. Many of them came back to the United States started the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and similar institutes in California.

[00:06:03]John Kabat-Zinn was a popularizer but major popularizer of what came to be known as mindfulness meditation which was a kind of paired down secularized version of the thing. And it this is the school of thought in which Keating was formed and he attempted to Christianize the practice by inserting Christian terminology but the basic methodology you're you're not incorrect is is is drawn from another tradition.

[00:06:25]So, the the wisdom or lack thereof of of the practice was really addressed by the Holy See in 1989.

[00:06:33]The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith uh uh issued a document called Some Aspects of Christian Meditation that's addressed a very narrow topic and it was the the extent to which uh Eastern methods of meditation could be incorporated or should be incorporated into Christian prayer. Now, it bracketed the question and it was very explicit about this. It said, "We're not going to look at whether or not those practices have any sort of clinical therapeutic benefit on their own. We're not addressing that question. We're just going to address the question of to what extent should these be integrated into Christian prayer?" And you should go read the document 1989 Some Aspects of Christian Meditation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[00:07:15]But the basic thesis was the essential orientation of Christian prayer is dialogical. It's I-thou. It's God and the soul.

[00:07:24]And so, there are clearly methods of meditation used in the East that don't have that fundamental orientation. And so, my own take on the practice is that I think it's false advertising, right? I think that it's a uh you know, if you if if you want if if uh uh if uh Father Keating wants to promote um Vipassanā meditation, he ought to just say, "Hey, I'm promoting Vipassanā meditation." I mean, we already know what that is. To package it as Christian prayer is to is truly, I think, misrepresent the nature of the thing. Um if you want really deep, very deep writing on the nature and goals and aims of Christian prayer, you ought to read the mystics of the Catholic Church. Um in particular, John of the Cross.

[00:08:08]Uh in particular, Saint Teresa of Ávila.

[00:08:11]Um Francis de Sales. I mean, these are some of the some of the big guns that you might want to go to. And um uh and you'll you'll have enough material to work on to keep you busy in in in meditation and contemplation for the rest of your life. I remember the first time I encountered Teresa of Ávila. I was a very new Catholic and I started digging in. As soon as [clears throat] I realized what was being asked of me, I went, "Whoa. Whoa, this is this is heavy-duty stuff." And I remember going to Father Mark, actually, and I said, you know, "Father Mark, I'm a new Catholic and I'm reading all this stuff in contemplative prayer and man, I don't know if I can handle all this Teresa of Ávila business." And Father Mark had wonderful advice for me. He said, "Well, maybe you're not ready for Teresa of Ávila."

[00:08:51]>> [laughter] >> And then, you know, 20 years later down the road, now I'm reading Teresa and John and deriving great benefit. Now it makes sense.

[00:08:59]>> makes sense.

[00:08:59]>> Very good. David, thanks so much uh for your letter from uh Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We do appreciate you listening on the Great Covenant Network. In a moment, we'll get to the phones and talk with Leslie in Texas. Lines are open for you as well, 833-288-EWTN.

[00:09:15]If you have a question for Dr. David Anders, 833-288-3986.

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[00:09:26]>> 2026 [music] is a Jubilee Year in recognition of the 800th anniversary of the passing of Saint [music] Francis of Assisi and the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville, [music] Alabama has been designated as a site where pilgrims have the opportunity [music] to obtain a plenary indulgence for themselves or a soul in purgatory. To learn more, please visit olamshrine.com/jubilee.

[00:09:54][music] >> There's a way of life where we learn that in giving, we receive.

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[00:10:59]>> [music] >> It's called The Journey Home with Dr. David Anders. We are live on this Wednesday afternoon. Love to chat [music] with you at 833-288-EWTN.

[00:11:11]Call or text 833-288-3986.

[00:11:15]Before we go to the phones, have I got a book for you. This is fantastic. Italy's shrines and wonders, volume two, discovering sacred spaces and fascinating places in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi by our friend Teresa Tomeo.

[00:11:32]Uh it was written on the occasion of the Jubilee year, which we're in right now, for the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis. This book talks about many Franciscan places, including the town of Assisi, where Saints Francis and Clare grew up, the mountainside hermitage of the Carceri, where the friars retreated for their prayer, also San Damiano, San Damiano, rather, rebuilt by St. Francis by his own hands.

[00:12:00]And of course, you've seen the San Damiano cross in our very own EWTN Chapel. There is so much in this book. I think it's going to be a great one for your future reading, perhaps to get you into the summer. Here it is, Italy's Shrines and Wonders, Volume 2, Discovering Sacred Spaces and Fascinating Places in the Life of St. Francis, available now from EWTN's Religious Catalog. Go to ewtnrc.com.

[00:12:29]Buy Catholic, Shop Catholic, ewtnrc.com.

[00:12:34]And if you're ready now, let's go to the phones at 833-288-EWTN.

[00:12:39]Here is Leslie in Texas, listening on the great Guadalupe Radio. Hey there, Leslie, what's on your mind today?

[00:12:47]>> Okay. I wanted to ask if St. Augustine St. Augustine Let me get over here.

[00:12:53]>> Okay.

[00:12:55]>> If If St. Augustine got his idea for double predestination out of the Bible where it talks about 144,000.

[00:13:07]And a little bit of background on that, and I'm glad the church does not adhere to that, but can you give me some background on that?

[00:13:14]>> Yeah, sure. Thank you so much. So, no, Augustine did not develop his ideas on the doctrine of predestination from the Book of Revelation or the reference to the 144,000.

[00:13:25]Um, I got Augustine scholars are pretty well agreed that Augustine there was a shift in Augustine's thinking that took place in the year 396. We're very specific about this. We we know this from a a neat little trick.

[00:13:39]In his Retractions, Augustine said 396 was the year. He told us exactly when it happened.

[00:13:45]>> Okay.

[00:13:45]>> And it you can find the shift in his letter to Simplician. And it was a letter in which he was answering a friend's questions about the interpretation of the Book of Romans.

[00:13:58]And so you can literally watch Augustine walk through the Book of Romans intellectually and come to particular conclusions about the doctrine of predestination from his reading of that letter in that very specific context.

[00:14:11]Prior to that, Augustine had a doctrine that emphasized far more strongly the human freedom of the will and predestination as a result of God's foreknowledge of future merits. And he he so he sort of shifted in 396 and began to emphasize the doctrine of God's prevenient grace >> Mhm.

[00:14:29]>> and a pre- predestinating grace. Now, I do have to make a caveat in here. You said you were glad the church didn't endorse that doctrine. The church absolutely endorses Augustine's adoption of predestination without respect to foreseen merits and the doctrine of prevenient grace. The church absolutely teaches that. That is a doctrine of the Catholic Church and it was confirmed at the Synod of Orange and by the Council of Trent and in the scholastic doctors of the church. So that is a Catholic doctrine. What the church rejects is the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, the double predestination whereby God specifically singles out individuals for the express purpose of damning them from before the beginning of time. That that position the church does not hold. A lot of other entailments in the Protestant doctrine of predestination the church also rejects. For example, the church rejects the doctrine of limited atonement. That's a Calvinist doctrine, namely that Christ only died for the elect of the elect. The Jansenists toyed around with limited atonement. It's one of the reasons that they were condemned.

[00:15:28]Um the church rejects the Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It affirms the perseverance of the saints, but in a completely different way. Calvinists hold that once a person has been regenerated, they can by no way by no means fall away from the faith. That's not the Catholic position.

[00:15:44]Catholic holds that a person can be regenerated and yet fall away.

[00:15:48]Uh but if God gives them the grace of restoration, if they make it to the end of the of the line, it's only because God's grace has accompanied them, hence the doctrine of perseverance, something that can't be foreknown, but can be prayed for. Um the uh Calvinists teach the doctrine of irresistible grace. If God has predestined you, there's nothing you can do about it. Grace can't be resisted, etc. Catholic Church has always taught the doctrine of resistible grace. Uh more robustly, the church teaches that God offers sufficient grace to everybody by which they by which they can in fact be saved. Again, that's something that Calvinists don't hold.

[00:16:22]But that at the end of the day, uh God's grace, God's prevenient grace comes first before the human will, and that if the will chooses God, it's only because God has granted the will the grace to do so. So So Augustine's doctrine has been nuanced a bit in Catholic history, uh but the but the general shape of it has entered into the framework of Catholic dogma.

[00:16:44]>> Leslie, is that helpful for you?

[00:16:46]>> Very helpful. So it is uh God's will, I mean God's prevenient grace supersedes even human will ultimately.

[00:16:57]>> It It empowers human will. So the the Augustinian position is that without the grace of God, you cannot will the good that would save you.

[00:17:05]And the grace of God comes along and enables you to will the good that will unite you with God.

[00:17:10]>> Okay. Leslie, thanks again for your phone call. That opens up a line for you at 833-288-EWTN. If you 3288 EWTN if you a question for Dr. David Anders 833-288-3986.

[00:17:23]It is called a communion and we are live on this Wednesday afternoon here on EWTN. Let's go to Jim now. Jim is a first-time caller from Des Moines listening on the great Iowa Catholic radio. Hey Jim, what's on your mind today?

[00:17:37]>> Hey, good morning and doctor.

[00:17:40]So I'm looking at the mass prayers and I'm looking comparing the Nicene Creed to the Apostles' Creed.

[00:17:48]And in the Apostles' Creed it mentions specifically that God descended into hell.

[00:17:55]And the the other one does not mention that. So could you explain that to me and what was what was our Lord and Savior doing down in hell for 3 days?

[00:18:04]>> Yeah, thanks so much. Really appreciate the question.

[00:18:07]The doctrine of Christ's descent into hell or sometimes called the harrowing of hell is something that Catholics affirm, something the Orthodox affirm, something that most traditional Protestants affirm. Although in the 20th century some of some Evangelical Protestants have gotten a bit weak in the knees about it. But it is I mean it's a traditional part of creedal affirmation of Christianity across traditions.

[00:18:26]It does not mean that Christ descended to the hell of the damned. That that's get that straight in your mind. So just like the word heaven is ambiguous. It can refer to the abode of God and the saints. It could also refer to up there.

[00:18:39]You know, basically you know, well the airplanes travel across the heavens. You know, that's a completely different So it's the word the word hell is likewise ambiguous. It can refer to the hell of the damned. It can also simply just refer to the abode of the dead. And it's in the latter sense that the word is used in the Creed.

[00:18:55]The doctrine you find it represented in in St. Peter's first Epistle is that Christ descended to preach salvation to the souls that had died before the incarnation. And so that would be the righteous dead of the old covenant like like Abraham, like Isaiah, like Moses, and so forth. And that at the ascension of Christ, then he the gates of heaven are open to everybody in the beatific vision becomes uh becomes accessible.

[00:19:21]>> Beautiful. Jim, thanks so much for your call from Des Moines. Glad you're listening to us on the great Iowa Catholic Radio. Still time for your phone calls at 833-288-EWTN.

[00:19:32]Call or text 833- 288-3986.

[00:19:37]We'll get to another call in uh just a moment here. This email from Steve in Albany, New York. Uh Jesus gives the apostles the authority over unclean spirits and to cure disease. Well, the 12 apostles are specifically listed, including Judas Iscariot. So, did Judas have this power and heal when he was sent?

[00:20:00]>> You bet you.

[00:20:02]Yep. Which is really important to know because it underscores the fact that the ability to perform miracles is not correlated to holiness.

[00:20:12]>> Ah.

[00:20:13]>> And so, if somebody comes and performs a miracle in your face and then tells you to believe what they say or do what they say, you your response should be pretty neat miracle trick. Um not going to violate my conscience.

[00:20:26]Oh, yeah? Well, you know, God and the angels have commanded me to tell you otherwise. Well, fie on you.

[00:20:32]That's the response, right? I don't care how many miracles you perform, I'm not going to do what you say if you command that I disobey the command of God or disobey conscience.

[00:20:40]>> Okay. Appreciate that. Steve, thanks for listening to us in Albany. Back to the phones now and Margo in Baton Rouge listening on her Alexa device. Hey there, Margo. What's on your mind today?

[00:20:53]>> Hi. I was calling because I've just recently completed um a college level class in the Old Testament.

[00:21:02]And not being raised very much at all in the Protestant church or the Catholic church.

[00:21:09]I didn't really know anything about Elijah and Elisha, and I was wondering if Dr. Anders knew other places in the New Testament that discuss um the differences. I mean, obviously Jesus is the son of God, and that's that's the huge difference. He is God, but is there a a book or something he could recommend that really goes into those issues more deeply about Elijah, Elisha, and Jesus Christ.

[00:21:44]>> Yeah, thanks so much. I really appreciate the question. So, you're absolutely correct to find points of commonality between Jesus and the Old Testament prophets.

[00:21:55]Um that is very much in Jesus's own mind and is very much in the mind of the New Testament writers. Uh Jesus is in one sense operating very much in the vein of Old Testament prophets, who, you know, as you know, if you've read the prophets, they like to run around and rebuke the powers that be for failing to keep the word of God and calling them back to a more vigorous mode of holiness. And John the Baptist and Jesus were very much cut out of that vein. Um uh major point of difference is that the Old Testament prophets, most of them, many of them talked about a coming day of the Lord when God would uh set things to right. He would vindicate the righteous. He would punish the wicked. He would uh he would establish Israel as uh head of the nations and so forth. And you you find those themes all over the Old Testament prophets.

[00:22:40]Sometimes they're associated with the Davidic monarchy. Sometimes they're associated with prophetic figures or or cosmological figures like the son of man in the book of Daniel, but there's always a sort of eschatological expectation of how God's going to set things to right sometime in the future.

[00:22:56]When Jesus shows up, uh well, I should actually say when John the Baptist shows up, uh his message is that that setting to write is happening now.

[00:23:04]Right, that the the long expected kingdom of God is at the door and so you better repent and get ready for it.

[00:23:11]Otherwise, you're going to be one of the ones that's judged rather than one of the ones that's admitted. And when Jesus shows up, he's very much in the vein of John the Baptist and so the imminence of God's kingdom is a key theme. Repent and believe the good news, the kingdom of God is here. That's his consistent message. And then he goes about demonstrating it uh, by healing sick, casting out demons, and so forth. When his authority is challenged, one of the things that Christ says in the Gospels is, um, if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then you know the kingdom of God has come among you. Like this this thing's happening right now.

[00:23:45]Um, now, obviously, his death and resurrection play heavily into the inauguration of this kingdom, which helps to flesh out a little bit the, uh, his message in Luke chapter 17 that the kingdom is not of this world. So, it's may may doesn't fulfill the literal expectations of some of the Old Testament prophets or their contemporaries who were maybe looking for Jerusalem to rebuild her walls and go out on a conquering spree and, you know, beat the snot out of the something like that. Um, if you want to look at what what other New Testament texts would specifically address the distinctions between Christ and the Old Testament prophets, there is a New Testament book that is all about that, um, namely the, uh, Book of Hebrews. The Book of Hebrews is all about the relationship of Jesus to the Old Testament prophets and priestly sacrificial system and the way in which he superseded them.

[00:24:35]Um, if you want some contextualization about Jesus and kingdom theology and the New Testament, a life of Jesus, so to speak, the Jesuit biblical scholar Daniel Harrington has a very good biography of Jesus that situates him very much in that vein. If you want a study of the life of Christ that focuses particularly on Jesus' prophetic identity, Pope Benedict the 16th wrote a a book series taking that precise theme as his central focus. So, the book Jesus of Nazareth and its sequels by Pope Benedict the 16th treats exactly that question.

[00:25:12]>> Margo, thank you so much for your call from Baton Rouge. Here's a quick email from Paula. Paula says, "I was taught to make the sign sign of the cross after the Confiteor. I see some I see some people making the sign of the cross, others do nothing. What is the correct teaching? And if it's not proper, when did it change?"

[00:25:32]>> Yeah, so um Tom, correct me if I'm wrong here cuz I'm not the super liturgy expert, but I don't think that it is indicated in the rubrics that the laity have to perform the sign of the cross after the Confiteor.

[00:25:42]>> No.

[00:25:42]>> Now, um you want to perform the sign of the cross after the Confiteor, knock yourself out, right? You know, I mean, I I this is just me, right? I remember one time I went to a to a sacramental preparation class and uh it was a religious sister who's teaching the class who pointed out and she was correct she was correct that many of the lay people had a habit of making the sign of the cross after they received communion on their way back to the pew.

[00:26:06]>> Uh-huh.

[00:26:06]>> And she said, "You know, that's not in the rubrics. That's not indicated. You know, you shouldn't do that." And I remember thinking, "All right, when I'm headed back to the pew after receiving communion, I am now in my own period of private devotion and prayer.

[00:26:18]>> Yes.

[00:26:19]>> of allowed to make any prayer I want to make, you know, I can pray in my heart what I want to pray. If I want to make the sign of the cross, gosh darn it, I'm going to make the sign of the cross, you know, I mean, um but uh you know, but I'm not going to impose that on the assembled congregation as this as if it were a normative liturgical form cuz it's not.

[00:26:37]>> Okay. Hey Paula, thank you so much for your email. We do appreciate that. And if you'd like to send us an email for a future show, here's the address: [email protected], [email protected].

[00:26:52]We try to answer a few emails on each of our live shows and once a month we'll do a mailbag and answer a whole bunch of emails. Again, CTC [music] at ewtn.com.

[00:27:03]But hey, lines are open for you right now. [music] You can talk with us live on the radio at 833 288 ewtn. Call or text 833 288 3986. In a moment, John in Central Pennsylvania and a text that just came in, we'll tackle that as well.

[00:27:22]Keep it right here on EWTN.

[00:27:26]>> June is the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of [music] Jesus. In 1675, Jesus told St. Margaret Mary that he wanted the Feast of the Sacred Heart to be celebrated on the Friday after the Corpus Christi Octave. St. John Paul II said, "This feast reminds us of the mystery of the love of God for the people of all times." Join us in this devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with art, books, statues, rosaries, chaplets, and more available now at ewtnrc.com.

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[00:28:11]>> Hello family, [music] I'm Montse Alvarado with some great news. EWTN's National Catholic Register has a new look. We've refreshed the design and added new features, [music] a cleaner layout, larger type, and quick summaries to help you get the key takeaways fast [music] while still staying true to our mission. And we've expanded our coverage from Rome. We also feature illustrations from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Steven [music] Breen. You'll find a new devotion section, more global reporting, and VITA, exploring the true, the good, and the beautiful. It's the same trusted [music] Register made even better.

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[00:29:13]>> On the next [music] More to Life, two roads diverged.

[00:29:16]>> Facing a big decision? Not sure what God wants? We'll help you get clarity.

[00:29:20]>> That's on the next More to Life. Now, back to Call to Communion with Dr. David Anders.

[00:29:32]>> Call to Communion with Dr. David Anders in progress here on EWTN. [music] Our phone number 833-288-EWTN.

[00:29:39]Call or text 833-288-3986.

[00:29:45]Let us get to a John, a first-time listener in Central Pennsylvania, listening to us on the Great Holy Family Radio. Hey John, what's on your mind today?

[00:29:56]>> Hi, can you hear me?

[00:29:57]>> Yeah, go right ahead, John.

[00:30:00]>> Yeah, so um I uh I was listening uh to some of the other calls and uh talking about Calvinism and some of the difference between uh Prot- uh Protestants and Catholics.

[00:30:13]And I was just wondering if there's a resource that you have for somebody like me that has way too many questions to kind of, you know, deal with them all here right now. Um but if you if you had like a resource Yeah. Um that can can sort of explain that to me.

[00:30:28]>> I do. I sure do. So, the um uh one of the most comprehensive uh and thorough resources that I know about is the website calledtocommunion.com that was created specifically to address theological differences between Protestants and Catholics, in particular reformed or Presbyterian Protestants.

[00:30:51]Um, it's a site that I have contributed to. All of the contributors are former Protestants.

[00:30:57]Uh, most of them uh, either seminary students or college professors, uh, former pastors, or theologians, or philosophers. So, well-trained people who know the material quite well, who have converted to Catholicism and then engage in a in a charitable dialogue with non-Catholics. So, that website is just a is just an absolute treasure trove of resources on these questions.

[00:31:20]Um, uh, a single book that would contrast Catholicism with fundamentalist Protestantism specifically is Karl Keating's book Catholicism and Fundamentalism.

[00:31:31]>> Great book.

[00:31:32]>> Uh, that's a good book. Um, I um, uh, I have written a book that the title may throw you but cuz you're thinking that's that's not my specific question, but hang with me. The title of the book is The Catholic Church Saved My Marriage by Dr. David Anders, published by EWTN.

[00:31:48]But in that text, I go into great theological detail about the path that led me as a Protestant seminary student and later PhD in Protestant theology into Catholicism. And I kind of take you blow by blow through the issues. And then I coordinate that with events in my family life that, you know, the kind of the theme of the book, but the theological analysis is quite thorough and it deals with all these sorts of questions.

[00:32:14]Um, so, calledthecommunion.com, uh, Karl Keating's book. There's another apostolate uh, that's a that's a kind of a friend of EWTN called Catholic Answers, and their website is catholic.com, and they've got sort of tracts and treatises on every topic you can think of under the sun. They're the sort of pithy, you know, one or two page answers to common questions about Catholicism and objections that people might have.

[00:32:38]It's another really good resource. And of course, keep on listening to EWTN and to this show. And when you have specific questions that you can't find answers to, well, by all means, call me. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to answer questions about the Catholic faith.

[00:32:50]>> John, uh great phone call and thanks for listening to us here on EWTN's Call to Communion. And don't be a stranger. We'd love to talk with you again. Uh just got uh and uh a text actually. This is from Davis listening to us on the iHeart Radio app in Cleveland. Davis says, "I was raised Baptist and have been inquiring about the Catholic faith. It is my understanding that the Bible was written under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But I also know that the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost. So, did the Old Testament prophets and authors, did they have access to the Holy Spirit before the time of Jesus?

[00:33:32]Thanks. God bless. Love your show."

[00:33:34]>> Yeah.

[00:33:34]>> And that's from Davis.

[00:33:35]>> Absolutely. So, the New Testament is very explicit that the Old Testament prophets wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So, in the book of 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 10 and following, we read, "Concerning salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow."

[00:34:06]>> There it is.

[00:34:06]>> Right. So, the text of the New Testament clearly ascribes inspiration to the Old Testament prophets as they prophesied the coming of Christ. Now, um to to the the general sense of your question, so what happened at Pentecost then if the spirit's given at Pentecost, then what was going on in the Old Testament?

[00:34:25]And uh you'll notice that when you when you study the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit seems to come on particular individuals empowering them for acts of ministry, right? So, uh, the spirit will come on a king and he'll or a judge and he'll, um, you know, it's like he gets, um, you ever play a video game and and like you can level up or your character like runs into some glowing orb and then you get like 30 seconds of superpower where you can really go kick tail and kill a bunch of bosses, you know? Um, and then they kind of wind down and they go back to normal.

[00:35:02]So, that was kind of the Holy Spirit would come in the Old Testament, you know, Samson would kind of pull himself together, grab a jawbone and and like go to work on the Philistines or something, you know, turbo turbo mode, you know?

[00:35:13]And then, um, you know, or the or the spirit would come and inspire a prophet to speak and the prophet would usually begin, you know, the word of the Lord came to me saying and he would articulate the thing or, um, or the spirit would come on kings and priests for specific acts of ministry.

[00:35:29]But, um, but that that kind of distribution of the spirit was not, as we shall say, democratic. It was given to particular individuals for acts of particular leadership.

[00:35:41]Um, nor did it touch the interior lives of all the people of God.

[00:35:47]And we know this because when you read the prophecies of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah chapter 31, he speaks about a time in the future when the Lord would send his spirit into hearts to write his law upon hearts and the and the book of Deuteronomy prophesied the same thing that, uh, the Old Testament covenant was written on tablets of stone.

[00:36:11]The time had not yet come when God would write the covenant on people's hearts.

[00:36:16]And that's that's this this this coming new covenant that we have expectation of. Ezekiel says the same thing chapter 28. So, the the distribution of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament has has two distinct properties that differentiate it from the old. The first one is this interior renovation, this the law being written on the heart. And that gift is given in baptism. Jesus calls it being born again. First St. Peter calls it being born anew, same idea, right? This regeneration from the inside out that enables us to walk with the Spirit and manifest love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness, self-control, and all those fruits of the Spirit that bring salvation. The other mode of the Spirit is that that empowerment for ministry that was limited to the prophets and the judges of the Old Testament gets democratized. That's what comes at Pentecost. You'll notice when you read the narratives of the Book of Acts that whenever the Spirit comes, there's some manifestation in spirit-inspired speech. It might be speaking in tongues. It might be prophesying. Sometimes we're told it's just speaking the word of God with boldness. That is what the Catholic Church understands to be given in the sacrament of confirmation. So grace comes through all the sacraments, but it comes in different modes. The mode of grace in baptism not exactly the same as the mode of grace in confirmation.

[00:37:44]>> Davis, thanks for listening to us in Cleveland. Good to hear from you today.

[00:37:48]Call to Communion here on EWTN. We can squeeze in a few more phone calls at 833 288 EWTN. Call or text. You can text just like Davis did. And that number again 833 288 3986.

[00:38:03]Let's go to Francisco now in North Carolina listening on the Great Divine Mercy Radio. Hello Francisco, what's on your mind today?

[00:38:11]>> Hey, hello.

[00:38:12]>> Howdy.

[00:38:13]>> Um just touching again on the predestination part.

[00:38:18]Um my theology when it comes to the Bible is that all humanity has fallen from the grace of God and we are all inclined to go in our desire which is against the will of God.

[00:38:36]And in that path since birth I think humans is going straight to hell if they don't repent.

[00:38:45]But then when I come across Romans 9 and I read um that the Lord will have mercy on whom he um wants and compassion on he he wants.

[00:39:00]And that it doesn't depend on human will but on God who has mercy.

[00:39:06]How do you align that his mercy being applied to this humanity that is going straight to hell because he's in rebellion to God that he that the will of man come into play when the Bible describes that all humanity just wants to do evil.

[00:39:22]>> Yeah, thanks. I really appreciate the question. So let me draw a couple of distinctions here.

[00:39:27]Uh first of all, it is not the Catholic doctrine that we're all bound for hell from the moment of our conception.

[00:39:33]That's not the Catholic position.

[00:39:35]That is the Calvinist position. The the reformed church, the Presbyterian church, 16th century Protestant uh movement definitely teaches what's called the doctrine of total depravity, which is that the zygote, right? I mean the the the the first cells of human life conceived in the womb are intrinsically meriting and deserving of eternal punishment. One Puritan writer said if we dropped from our mothers' wombs straight into the fires of hell and were there roaring, it would be just. That's the Puritan doctrine. That is not the Catholic doctrine. That has never been the Catholic doctrine. There may have been a few Catholics in history that held that as a private theological opinion. It's never been the dogma of the church. The church's position is that without actual sin, sin that is that is willfully committed, uh humans do not deserve eternal perdition. Um uh hence the the speculative medieval doctrine of limbo.

[00:40:38]Now, limbo is not a dogma. You don't have to believe in limbo, but the reason medieval theologians invented it was because they understood that it is not just to send an infant to hell for someone else's sin, for an ancestor's sin. And so, the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it is that original sin is not inherited guilt. And the word sin is used only by analogy.

[00:41:01]So, it is not the case that we're all headed straight to hell from the moment we are born. That's not the case, all right? Um now, the Catholic conception of the relationship, I should say the Latin Catholic conception of the relationship between grace and nature, grace and free will, is that uh God created Adam and Eve with the gift of sanctifying grace. It wasn't part of their nature.

[00:41:25]When they when they lost that, they lost it for for themselves and for their progeny. But, it is the loss of something that they didn't deserve, not the acquisition of something that they do deserve, right? And so, we're born into this life without the gift of sanctifying grace, but also without inherited guilt. Right?

[00:41:45]Now, we're we're weakened, we're wounded by sin. So, we're very likely to sin.

[00:41:50]Um the grace of God can come and heal those wounds and prevent us from from doing so and sanctify us and bring us to eternal life. Now, the uh the interpretation of Romans 9, I think is misguided here, right? Because the Book of Romans, you go back and read it in context, Paul's addressing a very specific question. He's really not talking about the fate of individual souls. He's really talking about the relationship of the the the geopolitical national ethnic unity known as Israel.

[00:42:22]>> Mhm.

[00:42:23]>> And then all the non-Israelites, all the non-Jews in the world, and the relationship of Jew to non-Jew.

[00:42:30]And Abraham, of course, had been called elected uh to have a special relationship with God. And the the uh the misinterpretation of that fact that some of Paul's contemporaries held was that they would be saved in virtue of their relationship to Abraham.

[00:42:48]And that everybody outside of Abraham was essentially lost. And Paul says, "No, that's not true. That that God is calling Gentiles as well."

[00:42:57]Hey, he can call whom he wants to call.

[00:43:00]So, we're really talking about groups of people and their relationship to the covenant of God, not individual souls in their relationship to damnation and salvation.

[00:43:11]>> Francisco, is that helpful for you?

[00:43:14]>> Yeah, thank you.

[00:43:15]>> Thank you. Thank you so much. And if you want to check your notes on that, you can check out the encore of this program, and that'll be posted for you at ewtn.com/listen.

[00:43:27]Rich will get that up and for you in the next couple of hours. ewtn.com/listen.

[00:43:33]One of our great programs here on EWTN Radio is the weekend program Register Radio, where uh Dr. Matthew Bunson and his team shine the light of the truth of the Gospel on the events of the day to equip Catholics with the insight and encouragement necessary to engage the culture for Christ, which is what we need to be all about. This weekend, it'll be uh Father Raymond de Souza is uh Matthew's special guest. So, do check that out. That's uh Saturday afternoon, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, and Sunday morning at 11:00 Eastern only on EWTN Radio.

[00:44:10]All right, here's an email from Ed who says, "Well, first of all, Ed is listening to us in Saskatchewan, Canada.

[00:44:17]Ed says, "I have a question regarding John 17:12.

[00:44:21]The verse sounds like Judas, and we talked about Judas earlier, Judas had no choice but to but to betray Jesus as it states that >> [clears throat] >> scripture needed to be fulfilled. Could this be correct? I was under the assumption that we all have been given free choice.

[00:44:41]I.e., we can either turn >> [clears throat] >> left or right, stop or go, act or not act. We clearly have a choice to turn to God or reject God. Also, excuse me, if our names are written in the book of life, and God knows who will be saved and who won't be, is this concept the same as Judas's ultimate betrayal being known by Christ and God? Kind of sounds unfair to Judas.

[00:45:09]Love your show. Love Dr. Anders." And that's from Ed in Saskatchewan.

[00:45:14]>> Yeah, thanks, Ed. So, you're basically raising the question of the relationship of God's foreknowledge to God's providence.

[00:45:21]Does God foreknow the future because he's caused it directly?

[00:45:26]And that's not necessary. There are There are philosophers that take that point of view that that say that if God has infallible foreknowledge of the future, then there can't be free will. That's not the Catholic position, but there are people who have taken that position.

[00:45:39]>> Okay.

[00:45:39]>> Um there's another alternative, which is that one that we know from experience was it's perfectly possible to foreknow the future without your knowledge causing the future. And I'll give you a perfectly good example.

[00:45:51]Um if I were to waltz home right now and offer my youngest son uh kimchi. Kimchi, son, you want some kimchi with a cheese on it, right? For lunch. Well, [clears throat] he cannot abide fermented foods. He doesn't eat cheese and uh he would not he wouldn't touch a a bowl of kimchi to save his life, right? Or anything else fermented. He doesn't even like soy sauce cuz it's fermented, right? He just nothing fermented for him. He doesn't like the taste of it. If I said, "Would you like uh kimchi and uh soy sauce with um with uh with yogurt and melted cheese for lunch?" He I can I can tell you with almost infallibly infallible certainty the answer to that question would be no.

[00:46:32]No, absolutely not. No way. If I said uh "Could I offer you a New York strip with Italian bread and a and a tiramisu for dessert?" I can guarantee you with almost infallible certainty the answer to that question would be yes. My foreknowledge of future events is not causing the future event, all right? And uh and so there's no necessity in holding that God's foreknowledge is causes these things. Now, the the view of the Catholic Church is that is that God uh does providentially control human history and he makes use of free human acts, free human acts, unconstrained human acts to bring about his purposes. And you say, "Well, how how can I square that?"

[00:47:12]Well, you know, again, I don't have the divine mind. I'm not operating from the divine perspective. But um you know, uh I think that uh human advertisers do this all the time.

[00:47:25]Right? They they they've run the statistics. They know the models. Uh pollsters do this. I mean, a lot of people in the business of of predicting and then capitalizing on what are essentially free free human acts.

[00:47:38]>> Yes.

[00:47:38]>> Right?

[00:47:39]>> Yes.

[00:47:39]>> And uh and God is much better much better than uh than the pollsters and and Madison Avenue uh at uh but first of all at maybe if you will even manipulating the circumstances around and also predicting the outcome of free human acts in order to bring about his purposes.

[00:47:57]>> Appreciate that. Thanks so much uh for your email. Let's get back to the phones and talk with Bill in North Dakota listening on the great Real Presence Radio. Hey there Bill, what's on your mind today?

[00:48:07]>> Hey there Bill. I I would like you to explain the difference in evangelical and orthodox beliefs.

[00:48:14]>> Okay, sure. Thanks. So uh you know, we're Catholics around here. So we're neither evangelicals nor Eastern Orthodox, but we can talk in a friendly way about our about our brothers in the faith.

[00:48:25]So um evangelicalism in Protestant Christianity is a modern movement.

[00:48:31]Um it has its roots in a couple of antecedents. So obviously the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century that introduced sort of key Protestant distinctions like the doctrine of the Bible alone and justification by alone and Christ alone and it rejected the intercession of saints and the papacy and the episcopacy by and large and had you know, evolved different theology of the sacraments. And so all Protestants tend to share those sorts of distinctions.

[00:48:56]Um but uh for the first say 300 years of Protestantism, most Protestants agreed with Catholics uh on one major point of ecclesiology, that is to say uh the doctrine of the church, namely that there is but one church and that visible unity is a is a is an objective goal to be pursued and and in fact, you know, schism from the one true church is a sin, right? You shouldn't break away from the one true church.

[00:49:22]Problem was within Protestantism because of their peculiar doctrine of religious authority, Protestants could never get on the same page about where that one true church was. I mean, every denomination thought they were it and everybody else was a heretic, right? And so they were always in fighting.

[00:49:36]And one response to that in the 18th century was an emphasis on conversion, the psychological event of conversion is kind of the only thing that matters or the thing that really matters uh the sort of being born again experience if you will. of Whitfield, the Great Awakenings, Jonathan Edwards, you've probably heard of those guys. Uh they promoted this idea and it led to a sense that what what really unites us as Christians is not our ecclesiology, not our doctrine of the church, but it's rather our interior religious experience that sort of marks us out as really belonging to Christ or not. That that doctrine got kind of a boost in the 19th century with the Second Great Awakening that really emphasized the idea that you can manipulate a conversion, you know, you can present Christ to people, ask them to pray the sinner's prayer, get them in the door, so to speak. Now, another influence that came to to factor in the development of evangelicalism was the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.

[00:50:31]So, uh when Darwinian evolution was hypothesized and there were developments in geology, uh as well as higher biblical criticism.

[00:50:40]So, modern scholarly uh discoveries uh Protestantism in North America split into two camps. The camps that tended to accept the developments of modern science and historiography and those that tended to reject them. The the rejectors broke away and came became what we call the fundamentalist movement and you've probably heard of the Scopes Monkey Trial. That was sort of the one of one of the most uh uh uh celeb- well, not celeb- celebrate is the wrong word, sort of um uh visible demonstrations of the conflict between fundamentalist culture and and the modern scientific establishment. Well, fundamentalism, after it sort of lost that battle in the popular culture, tended to retreat into a sort of uh you know, religious ghetto and and hide themselves away.

[00:51:24]Um people who had the same theological convictions in the 1940s as classic fundamentalists began to feel uneasy in their conscience about fundamentalism's refusal to engage culture.

[00:51:37]Uh men like Carl F. H. Henry and especially Billy Graham, somebody else who I whose name you probably know, uh deliberately pushed back. They didn't reject fundamentalist theology. They basically accepted fundamentalist theology and they accepted the conversionism of the Great Awakening, but they began to push for an emphasis on renewed intellectual life and engagement in the public sphere. And they founded an organization in 1948 called the National Association of Evangelicals. And thus, I think we can really probably date the birth of the modern evangelical movement to to 1948, 1950s, 1960s, uh the the evangelistic crusades of Billy Graham in the 1960s, the rise of the Jesus People Movement, um charismatic worship, the charismatic revival in the 19 late 1960s, 70s, um and and then, you know, in the in modern America, evangelicalism has really become the dominant expression of Protestant Christianity, uh really dwarfing mainline Protestantism in terms of its vocal impact. And of course, you know, now pollsters look at it as a political demographic that tends to be very partisan and one-sided in American political debate. So, that's kind of a brief summary of the history of evangelicalism. Now, um Orthodoxy is a Christian tradition predominantly found in the East. And by that, I mean the the the areas that were the the Empire that was not Latin speaking.

[00:53:04]So, the Greek speaking empire and then later Russia and Eastern Europe. And it it was united with the Catholic Church for 1,000 years. Uh they were essentially one church, understood themselves to be one, and they were united around the authority of the bishops, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, and the ecumenical councils, especially the first seven ecumenical councils.

[00:53:26]Um and but there were obvious differences with the West in language, also canon law, and and and spirituality, and differences in the way they articulated the um, deposit of faith theologically. So, just differences of emphasis. Those differences of emphasis eventually led to political tensions between East and West, uh, particularly as the Bishop of Rome, uh, continued to press his claims of universal jurisdiction. That is to say, he's the boss. And since Constantinople, the seat of the Roman Empire in the East, was far more powerful, wealthy, educated, sophisticated than Rome, the Easterners tended to look at the Latins as a bunch of barbarian boobs who didn't know what they were doing. And, uh, and they objected to theological developments in Western theology. And those tensions eventually led to a series of breaks, uh, between individuals, say the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope would get into a spat. Um, and then eventually those sort of led to the fissures of the communions altogether.

[00:54:28]So, by the by the 11th century, things were looking pretty dim. And, uh, and by the 13th century, pretty much a complete break between West and East. Eastern part of the Catholic Church became known as the Eastern Orthodox churches, and they're no longer in communion with the Pope or the Bishop of Rome.

[00:54:44]>> There you go, Bill. We, uh, wrapped up a thousand years in 3 minutes. Thanks so much for your call today from North Dakota. Hey, Dr. David Anders, thank you, sir.

[00:54:53]Keep it right here on EWTN. Coming up next on most of these EWTN stations, it's Open Line Wednesday with Father Mitch Pacwa taking your [music] calls as well. On behalf of our fantastic team, I'm Tom Price along with Dr. David Anders. Hey, thanks [music] for, uh, joining us. See you tomorrow on the Thursday edition of Call to Communion.

[00:55:13]Until then, have yourselves a beautiful day and God bless.

[00:55:26]>> Hey, this is Michael O'Neill, the Miracle Hunter. I'll be delving into [music] the fascinating world of miracles and taking you on a hunt that explores the greatest mysteries and marvels of the Catholic Church. I'll be examining [music] what constitutes a miracle, how miracles are investigated and approved.